Posted
by
samzenpuson Tuesday August 26, 2014 @03:20PM
from the build-it-better dept.

KentuckyFC writes The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is constructed from 2.4 million limestone blocks, most about 2.5 tonnes but some weighing in at up to 80 tonnes, mostly sourced from local limestone quarries. That raises a famous question. How did the ancient Egyptians move these huge blocks into place? There is no shortage of theories but now a team of physicists has come up with another that is remarkably simple--convert the square cross section of the blocks into dodecadrons making them easy to roll. The team has tested the idea on a 30 kg scaled block the shape of a square prism. They modified the square cross-section by strapping three wooden rods to each long face, creating a dodecahedral profile. Finally, they attached a rope to the top of the block and measured the force necessary to set it rolling. The team say a full-sized block could be modified with poles the size of ships masts and that a work crew of around 50 men could move a block with a mass of 2.5 tonnes at the speed of 0.5 metres per second. The result suggests that this kind of block modification is a serious contender for the method the Egyptians actually used to construct the pyramids, say the researchers.

"Slave" is a hard term to use. It evokes American chattel slavery, where on person owns another, and we're more likely talking about agricultural workers(peasants) who didn't have work to do during the floods of the nile.

In ancient Egypt, the food reserves were controlled by the temples and thus by priests and other upper class members of society.

So there was a socially powerless labor class, and a means to control them. Certainly they also had force, but it wasn't the "main" means of control. The line between "peasant" and "slave" in ancient societies is a vague one.

Anyone that actually lived in the middle east knows that sand is everywhere. They simply stacked the blocks while building up a sand pile around it, then eventually dug the sand away again, while dressing the stone from the top down to the bottom. There are actually some unfinished spots in Egypt where the tools of the trade and the gravel heaps surrounding the still partially dressed stone remained. There is no mystery about it in reality - only on TV.

Not in the Old Kingdom. The great extents of the Egyptian Empire are New Kingdom, 2000 or so years later. The Old Kingdom was early Bronze Age. Stone Tools were still the rule, not the exception. Bronze was difficult to make and copper tools were more common in the rare instances when metal tools were used. There are records of the gangs whose job it was to sharpen the copper chisels that were used.

We should remember that this was not the first, or the second, or the third, huge pyramid they built, it was the sixth. They had an extensive knowledge to stone and had to deal with it. The Egyptologist Cyril Aldred had an illustrative story. He was traveling down a side branch of the Nile with a local boat crew. They found their way blocked by a rock fall. He assumed that they would have to go all the way back and find a new way. The crew said they could have it cleared in a few hours and it wasn't a big deal, they do this all of the time. He was astonished to watch then use techniques that he hadn't seen before to clear the stones. They would use mud backs to hold fires in place and either splash or pour cold water on the heated stone to shatter it. That, a few levers, and their knowledge was all that was needed to move tons and tons of stone out of the way.